At the second annual Wikimania conference, held this year at Harvard Law School, there was what might be considered a quintessential Wikipedian moment: as Martin Benjamin, a researcher at Yale University,
gave a talk about the Swahili dictionary he is creating online,
Ndesanjo Macha was simultaneously sitting in the audience using a Wi-Fi connection and laptop to put the finishing touches on his Wikipedia entry, "Martin Benjamin," in Swahili.

It was just the 1,025th article written for the Swahili version of Wikipedia (sw.wikipedia.org),
the online, open-source encyclopedia founded five years ago by Jimmy
Wales, and the fifth Mr. Macha had written that weekend in Cambridge,
Mass.

In founding Wikipedia, Mr. Wales has said, he aimed to
create "a free encyclopedia for every person on the planet in their own
language," a goal he has defined as having 250,000 entries in every
language spoken by more than a million people.

But while larger
Wikipedias, like those written in English (1,377,015 entries and
counting) and French (348,243 entries), wrestle with questions of
accuracy and vandalism, as well as the imposition of limits on who can
create and edit entries, smaller Wikipedias face more basic questions:
How do you create an online encyclopedia when few native speakers have
access to the Internet? What use is an encyclopedia when literacy rates
among a language’s speakers can approach zero? (This is not a problem
for Swahili.) And who should control the content of an encyclopedia in
a local language if not enough native speakers are moved, or able, to
contribute?

If only native speakers of Swahili had contributed
to that version, the Wikipedia might not exist at all. Though Mr.
Macha, 36, who trained as a lawyer in Tanzania and is now director of
the largest Boys and Girls Club in Greensboro, N.C., is a major source
of entries, none of the other primary contributors grew up speaking the
language: "One is German, one is in Texas, and one is in Canada," said
Mr. Macha, who was the only African — or African-American — to attend
the entire three-day conference.

"They are all white, and to me
it is very interesting — it shows that the world is not flat, that the
world is still round," he said. "We have allies, people who are willing
to help us, but we need to be in charge of our own identity. When it
comes to producing information, we don’t want to be dependent."[read full article]

June 11, 2006

High in a mist-shrouded mountain village, an ancient tribe patiently awaits the return of its divine leader.

He is no mere mortal like themselves, dressed as they are in and straw sheaths to protect their modesty — rather, they believe he is the human face of an ancestral spirit who left their island many moons ago to look for a bride.

Their legend tells how this spiritual ancestor ended up in England — and eventually married a queen. Which explains why the Duke of Edinburgh, who is well aware of his role as a god in the eyes of the Yaohnanen tribe, has established a curious relationship with these people, who dwell in a simple village in the centre of the Vanuatu island of Tanna in the South Pacific.

Such is the revered status the Duke holds among the 400 tribespeople that, as their chickens scratch the dirt, they speak of him with the kind of devotion Catholics reserve for the Virgin Mary ... (read more)

April 03, 2006

Toumani Diabate, who plays the 21-string kora, won the Grammy this year for best
traditional world music album for “In the Heart of the Moon,” a collaboration
with Ali Farka Touré. Mr. Diabate is a descendant of 53 generations of kora
players from the Malinke tribe. (Ed Alcock for The New York Times)

From the New York Times:By Josh Hammer

WE were walking down a dirt road in a neighborhood of Bamako with the
mellifluous name of Badalabougou, following the rhythmic beating of a bongo
drum. Then we saw it: down an alley lined with dusty neem trees and flowering
jacarandas, a few hundred wedding celebrants had gathered under a canopy made
from scraps of United Nations-issue sheeting, intently watching a local
percussion band play a rousing music known as deedadee.

Lithe male dancers wearing leather headdresses, cowrie-studded orange vests,
burlap shorts and iron bangles leapt and shook rice-filled calabashes known as
yabbaras. A jembe fola ("he who talks with the drum") pounded on a bongo
fashioned from sheets of horsehide stretched over a gasoline can. Another
percussionist banged a grooved metal cylinder called a karinyan.

Then the dancers disappeared and a petite female singer moved in, circling
through the crowd and singing praises to relatives of the bride and groom.
Suddenly, she began gesticulating in our direction, while guests looked on,
amused.

"She is singing about you," one told me. "She is praising you for visiting
Mali."

January 04, 2006

The considerable experience accumulated in the course of these six years of the Proclamation, in terms of the methodology for the identification and selection of the masterpieces and the concrete lessons learned from the safeguard plans currently in operation, is an irreplaceable template that will prove to be priceless for us when it comes to implementing the Convention.

From the opening speech of the Director-General, at the Meeting of the International Jury for the Proclamation, 21 November 2005

The program was first launched by Unesco in 1977 to raise public awareness about the value of intangible heritage and the need to safeguard it. This living heritage, by its very nature fragile and perishable yet at the same time essential for the cultural identity of peoples, was not in fact taken into account by the 1972 Convention for the preservation of the world's cultural and natural heritage, which focussed exclusively on tangible heritage ... .